


More Than Enough

by rahleeyah



Category: The Doctor Blake Mysteries
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-13 03:20:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28896519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rahleeyah/pseuds/rahleeyah
Summary: Written for the Jeanuary Big Bang on tumblr, prompt is: Christopher. On the eve of her second wedding, Jean receives an unexpected visitor.
Kudos: 6





	More Than Enough

Jean couldn't sleep. She hadn't expected to; she'd not slept a wink the night before her first wedding, and she was as excited and anxious now as she had been then. Oh, she was older now, and settled, and her life wouldn't change so very much after the ceremony was through. She'd come back to the same house, for one, to the same man she'd been living with for the last two years, the same tasks and the same clothes. She wasn't pregnant, this time, and this time she knew already what it was to be a wife, to share her home, her bed, her body with a man. Those questions had been asked and answered many years before.

It was still a change, however. A monumental change, like the tectonic plates of the earth shifting beneath her feet. When she and Lucien returned home following a brief civil ceremony and a lovely party at the Colonists', there would be champagne waiting for them - she'd had no champagne, the first go round - and a new bed in the studio, never slept in. Not his bed, nor hers, but _theirs_ , a new beginning in a new bedroom meant for both of them together. When they came home, Lucien would finally be able to touch her, and she'd finally be able to let him; when she had wed Christopher she'd already spent two years learning how it felt to hold him, but she had no such experience with Lucien. With Lucien she had tried, so hard, to be better than she had been before, to put off the recklessness of her youth, and save this one thing for when they were wed. At present she was almost wishing that she hadn't, however; what if after all this time of building expectations neither of them lived up to the fantasies they'd conjured to keep themselves satisfied during their engagement? What if...what if it wasn't enough?

There were other worries, too. Come tomorrow she'd be _Mrs. Blake,_ the Doctor's wife, all eyes in town on her in a way they never had been before. Come tomorrow this house she had lovingly tended for so many years would be _hers,_ the legacy of the previous Mrs. Blake passed into her hands. After tomorrow she would no longer have her own bedroom to run to, to hide in when Lucien's madcap schemes left her cross or agitated; she would have to face him, and her privacy would be only a memory. After tomorrow he meant to whisk her away for an outrageously long honeymoon, travelling the world, seeing the sights as she had longed to do since childhood. It was a dream come true, but it was a dream Jean had long since given up on. Would the world enchant her the way she'd always hoped, or after all this time would she find that she was just a Ballarat girl after all, dreaming of home? Would the fine people in all those fancy places take one look at her and see at once that she was no match for Lucien, that the expensive clothes she'd bought at her new husband's insistence - _I want you to have whatever you like, Jean,_ he'd said - weren't enough to hide the stink of farmgirl that still clung to her all these many years later?

And what if...what if Lucien grew tired of her one day? He was an excitable, distractable sort of man, and his heart had already been withdrawn from one wife. Oh, the circumstances there were exceptional, in every possible sense of the word; Lucien had spent twice as long searching for his wife as he'd spent married to her, and when they finally reunited he was no more the man she remembered than she was the same woman. Still, though, Jean fretted. She liked her routine, and her quiet life, and she spent most of her days begging Lucien to stop, to wait, to slow down. What if in time he grew tired of her holding her back? What would become of her, if one day he no longer loved her?

 _You think too much,_ a voice seemed to whisper in the back of Jean's mind, and she laughed as she rolled over under the blankets, trying to get more comfortable, for when she heard those words it was Christopher's voice that spoke them. How many times had he said that to her? More times than she could count. She'd spent years telling _him_ to slow down, too, for all the good it had done her. He had always been impulsive, ten times more likely to start some new endeavor than to finish any of the others he'd already begun. But he had been sweet, too, and everything to her once.

"It's funny, isn't it," his voice said again, but this time Jean bolted upright in her bed, her heart pounding madly for this time it had been no fond remembrance, echoing down through the years; this time, it sounded like he was there, actually _there,_ in her room and talking. And as she sat up, leaning back against the headboard in shock, she found him standing there, at the end of her bed.

"Christopher?" she breathed, more terrified than she had ever been in her entire life. Jean Beazley was not a superstitious sort, was firmly convinced that ghosts were no more than the hysterical imaginings of sleep-addled minds, but she was not sleeping now, and she could _see_ him. Her Christopher, as he had been on the day he left her, in dusty brown trousers and a fine white shirt, the curls of his dark hair tumbling down into his eyes. Christopher, barely thirty, handsome and strong, and _here_ , through some force of fate she could not fathom. There was an almost insubstantial quality to him, however; when he moved she could almost see right through him, the colors of his clothes and his skin faded like an old photograph, the vision of him walking towards her like something from an old film.

"It's all right, Jeannie," he said. "I can't stay long. But I reckon you need someone to talk to, so…" he shrugged, and tears gathered in the corners of her eyes.

"This can't be real," she said, mostly to herself, scrubbing her hands over her eyes, but when she blinked them open again, he was still standing there, watching her, grinning. Her earliest memories were of him, and when she was young he was always the one person she could speak to honestly, her best friend in all the world. He was the only one who had ever truly known her, her heart, her dreams, and he was right, she did need to talk to someone - to _him._ But he was dead and gone, and her mind could not accept the vision of him in front of her, no matter how her heart might long for it.

"If you're really a ghost you would have come to me sooner," she said, the words almost an accusation. "There were so many times…"

So many times when she would have given anything to see his face, to hear his voice, to talk to him about the boys, about the farm, about how much she missed him. Beside her Christopher frowned, and tucked his hands in his pockets.

"I came when you were sleeping," he said sadly. "You needed to get on with your life, Jeannie, and I would have just held you back. But I came, so many times. I wanted to see you. I wanted to touch you," he reached out, as if to brush the hair back from her forehead, but his fingers were insubstantial as a wisp of smoke, and Jean never felt his touch at all. There had been a few nights, she recalled, when she had woken after midnight certain that he was beside her, but turned to find that the other side of the bed was empty, and always would be, that the sensation of her husband beside her, comforting her as she desperately wished he would, had been no more than a dream.

"You weren't dreaming," he told her, as if he'd read her very thoughts. Maybe he had; what did Jean know of ghosts, anyway? She was still certain she must have been dreaming now, that none of this was real, but if her subconscious mind had conjured Christopher she was determined to speak with him while she could, for perhaps, she thought, this was just what she needed.

"I have missed you so much, sweetheart," she said. She wanted to reach for him, but he'd just proven she would never be able to grab hold of him, and so she worried the edge of the blanket between her fingers instead.

"I know," he said. "Every word you ever said to that stone, I heard it."

A ragged, choking sound escaped her; for decades now Jean had been visiting the marker at Sacred Heart, laying flowers on an empty grave and saying to her husband in death all the things she'd never been able to tell him in life. When she'd first begun she'd felt foolish, knowing he wasn't there, not really, but she'd kept at it because she needed to, somehow, needed some connection to him. The thought that he had heard her, every word, that he knew all the things she had tried to tell him, about their sons, about her fears, about her impending marriage and all her doubts, comforted her more than she could say.

"I know all about your man," he said then, and she searched his face, wondering if he would disdain her for moving on. He didn't look cross, though, and that was a comfort. "When you told me about him the first time, I decided to follow him around for awhile. See what he's like. He's a little flash for my tastes," Jean laughed at that, for she knew it was true, "but you're right. He's a good man. And he's just what you need, Jeannie."

"You were what I needed," she told him.

"That was then," he said with a shrug. "I loved you like crazy, you know that. But he does, too, and he's here, now. He'll give you everything you ever wanted, and you'll keep him from losing his mind. I met a few folks up there," he gestured vaguely towards the ceiling, and, Jean supposed - Jean _hoped -_ towards heaven, "who remember him. A few folks who still keep an eye on him, help him out when he needs it. He needs you, Jean. That's what's funny to me. You're sitting here thinking you aren't enough for him, and I used to worry the same thing about you. But we're both wrong, see?"

"You were more than enough for me," she said earnestly, and Christopher smiled at her sadly, a smile she had been aching to see for nearly twenty years.

"I know that now," he answered. "Hell, you've told me enough times."

Jean laughed, a bit wetly; she'd been whispering those words to his stone for so many years, never really believing he could hear her. Maybe he'd gotten tired of the repetition.

"We were happy, and we loved each other, and what we had was more than enough, so long as we were together. Even when you didn't have everything you dreamed about, you were happy, weren't you? With me?"

"Always," she answered. They'd argued like any other couple, and there had been nights when the bonds of their quiet life had chafed her like iron shackles at her wrists, but she never would have changed it, never would have traded a moment of it, for the good times only came after the bad, and she knew one could never be had without the other.

"It'll be the same for him, with you. You'll see. And besides, things will be easier this time." He cast a glance around her bedroom, and she wondered for a moment how it must look to his eyes, for though the furnishings of this room were modest by some tastes everything in it was far finer than what they'd had in the farmhouse a lifetime before. "You're all grown up now," he added, and with that he looked back at her, his eyes wistful and sad. She _had_ grown up, without him; she was nearly fifty, now, older than Christopher had ever been or would ever be, with grey in her hair and wrinkles on her face, while the picture of him before her was young and hale and healthy, and not a day older than the last time she'd seen him. He was frozen in time, forever young, and her life had carried her far away from him. As strange as it was for her to see him, this vision of him was familiar to her. How much more painful must it have been for him, she wondered, to see his sweet young wife growing old?

"You're right where you need to be, Jeannie. And you're enough. Just as you are."

"I love you," she said, and reached for him even though she knew she'd never be able to touch him, some part of her needing it, needing him, no matter how foolish it might have been. That was what it all came down to in the end, the only thing that had ever mattered, or ever would. She loved him, and she loved Lucien, and the love of one had never, would never, diminish the love of the other.

"I know, sweetheart," he told her, smiling sadly as her fingertips drifted straight through his, both their hands curling as if trying to hold on to something that wasn't there. "I love you, too. Always have done. Since we were kids. The first time I saw your face I was a goner, Jeannie. And I wouldn't change a bit of it. Well," he pulled a face, "I wouldn't have gone off to fight, if I could go back and change it now. I wouldn't have left you. I wish like hell I'd never left you, and we could have grown old together."

Jean tried to imagine it for a moment, what things would have been like if Christopher never left. Would Jack have been so wild, so lost? Would young Christopher have joined the army, if his father never had? Would they still be on the farm, trying to scratch out a living and dancing in the kitchen to the wireless, happy still despite what they lacked?

"Can't be changed," he told her gently, and she wondered then if he was asking himself the same questions, wondering what would have become of them if she was still his wife, and not set to marry someone else. "What's done is done. All you have to worry about now is what happens next."

His head jerked up suddenly, like a dog that had caught a scent, and a strange, wistful expression crossed his face.

"I've got to go," he said. "They don't like us hanging around down here where people can see. They reckon we'll get into trouble. I've stayed too long already."

Of course he had; Christopher had never been any good at following other people's rules.

"Will I see you again?" she asked him desperately, her eyes glued to his face, memorizing his features, hiding the vision of him away deep within her heart.

"If you need me," he said.

He'd always been there when she needed him; she knew that now.

"But I don't reckon you will. It'll be grand, Jeannie, you'll see."

He'd said the same thing to her on the eve of their own wedding, and tears gathered in Jean's eyes to hear him say those words to her now. She hadn't believed him then; maybe it was time she took his words to heart.

"I love you, Christopher. I always have. And the boys love you, too."

He grinned at her, a bit lopsidedly. "I check in on them from time to time, you know," he told her. "Jack'll come around, love. He's a bit too much like me, but you'll see, he-"

Christopher's voice cut off sharply, his eyes once more rising towards the ceiling, as if he'd heard a voice calling his name.

"Shit," he grumbled. "That's me gone, then. Good luck, sweetheart. I love you."

"Christopher-" once more she reached for him, but it seemed his time was well and truly up, for in the next breath he had vanished, and Jean found herself reaching towards thin air, tears cold on her cheeks.

In the morning she would tell herself it had been no more than a dream, but in the moment she knew the truth, and she would carry that truth in her heart for all the rest of her days. It had been _him,_ come to tell her, finally, that she could put her fears about being _enough_ to rest. There was no one on earth whose counsel could have convinced her, but there was one person in heaven who could, and he had done his work. Jean slid back beneath her blankets, clutching them tight to her chest, and whispered a prayer, thanking God for both those men, her Christopher and her Lucien, for their love, and for the blessings of a life that had not always gone according to plan but had always, and would always be, more than enough for her.


End file.
